


Pancakes

by kjack89



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pets, Rabbits, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 23:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2002329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good morning!” Jehan said cheerfully. “I see you and Pancakes have been getting acquainted!”</p>
<p>“Why is there a rabbit in our bed?” Joly asked, as calmly as he could manage. “And why is it named after a breakfast food?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pancakes

**Author's Note:**

> Based very, very loosely on Pancakes the rabbit from season 4 of the O.C.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

Joly woke up slowly to what sounded suspiciously like an animal nibbling on his blanket, and he opened his eyes to see a large, floppy-eared rabbit chewing serenely on the afghan that his grandmother had knit for him.

Since Joly had at one point in time lived with Combeferre, this was hardly the strangest thing that he had ever woken up to — the head of a pig floating in formaldehyde in a jar on his nightstand probably took that honor, such as it was — but he still was quite confused as he came to full awakeness and the conclusion that the rabbit wasn’t just the leftover remnant of a dream. Carefully, he pulled himself into a sitting position, trying not to disturb the rabbit in question, which continued its chewing, and called softly, “Jehan!”

Jehan beamed at him as he swept into their bedroom and kissed Joly swiftly on the lips. “Good morning!” he said cheerfully. “I see you and Pancakes have been getting acquainted!”

“Why is there a rabbit in our bed?” Joly asked, as calmly as he could manage. “And why is it named after a breakfast food?”

“Because Pancakes are your favorite breakfast food,” Jehan said, as if that somehow answered the question, sitting down on the bed and petting Pancakes behind the ears. “I would have named him Waffles, of course, being my favorite breakfast food, but I figured I’d play to your stomach in a desperate bid to let me keep him.”

He looked so earnest and eager that Joly almost felt bad tugging the remnants of his afghan away from the rabbit. “Do I even want to know where you got it?”

Jehan frowned. “‘It’ is a ‘him’. And he came from the lab at the university. I was there early to drop off the latest chapter of my dissertation to my advisory committee and someone had left the door unlocked and, well, I couldn’t help but poke my head in, and you should have seen them, Jolllly. It was like something out of Shawshank Redemption or the Green Mile or Cool Hand Luke. They all looked so miserable in their rows of cages, so I grabbed Pancakes and made a run for it.”

Joly sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you even know what they were using him for?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

As if sensing where Joly was going with his line of questioning, Jehan preemptively pouted and grabbed the rabbit, holding it to his chest protectively. “What they were doing to him hardly matters,” he said, sounding scandalized. “He was  _imprisoned_. And what is it Combeferre says about being free?”

Though Joly knew exactly to what Jehan was referring, he nonetheless pinched the bridge of his nose tighter as if it might somehow pinch some sense into Jehan. “You know I love you,” he said, as a lead into what he was about to say. “But you don’t know what kind of tests they were running on the rabbit. For all you know, they could have been studying him for behavior, and he could be living quite the cushy life.”

“And what if they weren’t?” Jehan challenged, still cuddling Pancakes to him. “What if they were using him for all kinds of terrible medical testing?”

Joly bit back his initial response, which was to enumerate all of the ways that animal testing had led to vast and important medical breakthroughs, and instead went for the sympathy vote. “Rabbits can carry a lot of diseases,” he told Jehan. “Pasteurellosis, Salmonellosis, Brucellosis, Encephalitozoonosis…”

He trailed off, hoping that Jehan would get his point, but instead Jehan pouted almost comically. “We can take him to the vet,” he pointed out, a rather rational response, all things considered. “He can get his immunizations and treated for anything else he may be carrying. Just don’t make me take him back, Jolllly — I couldn’t bear putting him back in that prison.”

Sighing heavily, Joly shook his head slowly. “We can’t keep him, love,” he said quietly, reaching out for Jehan’s hand, unsurprised when he jerked away. “I know you meant well by bringing him home, but between my residency hours and your dissertation hours, we’re not going to be home enough to take care of a pet. And besides, he could be doing a lot of good in this world, far better than what he would be doing here, eating the afghan that my grandmother assured me she bled over.”

“Your grandmother’s dead,” Jehan said frostily, standing, Pancakes still clutched in his arms. “And frankly, that afghan is hideous.”

He turned on heel and marched out of the room, pausing in the doorway to tell Joly, “If you want to take him back, you have to take him yourself, and look into his adorable little eyes as you lock him back in a cage for the rest of his life. And you have to be the one who lives with it.”

Though Jehan didn’t slam the door after him, it was only because his arms were otherwise occupied holding Pancakes, and Joly sighed heavily. He loved Jehan, really he did, as much as it might seem like they were opposites sometimes, the poet and the doctor, but occasionally, and truly only occasionally, Jehan’s more… _dramatic_  moods took a lot out of him. Their disagreements were normally minor and blew over quickly, forgiven by kisses and cuddles, but Joly sensed that this was a larger disagreement, and something not so easily forgiven or forgotten.

Even so, he knew that he was right. Between his schedule at the hospital and Jehan’s schedule of writing when the mood struck, not to mention Les Amis meetings and protests and just plain nights out with their friends, neither of them had the time to care for a pet, especially a pet like a rabbit, which was deceptive in terms of maintenance (Joly had gone through a  _Watership Down_  phase when he was younger and did a lot of research on what it would take to own a rabbit). Regardless of whether he wanted a pet rabbit — regardless of the implications of owning a pet together with his boyfriend, which certainly brought living together to a whole different level that neither had really addressed — it wouldn’t be fair to the rabbit to keep him when there was a perfectly good life that they could return him to.

So Joly got out of bed, got dressed, and went into the living room, carefully picking Pancakes up from where he had moved on from chewing Joly’s afghan to chewing the cushions of the couch, and bundled him into a makeshift carrier, all while Jehan watched in stony silence. “I’m sorry,” Joly offered, though the words seemed hollow.

Jehan didn’t answer, but to be fair, Joly hadn’t really expected him to.

“I’ll be home late tonight,” Joly continued, as if this was a normal day and he was updating Jehan on his schedule. “I drew the late shift at the hospital. You don’t have to stay up for me.”

Jehan still didn’t answer, and Joly sighed, bent over to kiss him on the forehead (glad when Jehan didn’t move away from him), and left, bringing Pancakes with him so as to return him to the lab on his way to the hospital.

* * *

 

The next morning, Jehan woke up to the rather unexpected sound of an animal chewing, and the feeling of several small creatures crawling on top of him, and opened his eyes to see not only Pancakes but several other rabbits, all content to make Jehan’s blanket-wrapped body their grazing grounds for the moment. “Joly?” Jehan asked, trying to keep his voice down to not startle the rabbits on top of him.

Joly came slowly into the room, holding yet another rabbit in his arms, the large, cream-colored rabbit nudging at his chin. “Hey,” Joly said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I, uh, I hope you don’t mind…”

Jehan sat up slowly, pulling Pancakes to him. “Where did they all come from?” he asked in a dazed voice.

Shrugging, Joly rubbed the rabbit in his arms between the ears. “I took Pancakes back,” he said in a low voice. “Gave them some excuse about him getting free. But they didn’t care. They told me that because one of the rabbits had gotten free, their results were ruined, and they were going to put not only Pancakes but all the rabbits in the experiment to sleep!”

He sounded so outraged that Jehan couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face. “And I imagine you couldn’t let that happen.”

“Of course not,” Joly said, indignant. “So I told them that I’d take them all. And, look, we’re going to have to give some of them away to our friends because we  _really_  can’t keep an entire warren of rabbits in our apartment, but I couldn’t just let them get  _euthanized_.”

“So Pancakes is here to stay,” Jehan said happily, kissing the rabbit in question on top of his head before leaning forward and kissing Joly on the lips (Joly made a face but still let Jehan kiss him).

Joly shrugged. “Yes, Pancakes is here to stay. And I thought, well, we might keep this one as well, to keep him company.” He held up the rabbit in his arms, and Jehan grinned at him.

“That absolutely sounds like a plan.” He kissed Joly again before telling him, “I love you.”

Joly smiled. “I love you, too.”

Jehan rubbed the ears of the rabbit in Joly’s arms. “What do you think we should name this one?”

Now Joly’s smile widened into a grin. “Well," he said, reaching out to lace his fingers with Jehan’s, “I was thinking we could name this one Waffles.”


End file.
